True
Spirituality

What
makes the Christian faith distinct from other ways of approaching
God? The apostle Paul was intensely concerned with this question.
Various kinds of Judaism and Greco-Roman philosophies held deep
influences in the churches he had founded; sometimes to the point
that they ceased to be Christian. Paul’s battle against
alien teaching tells us a lot about what Paul thought was unique
about the gospel. When he writes to the churches to explain why
the teaching of his opponents had to be rejected, we learn what is
essential to the Christian faith.

When
Paul wrote 2
Corinthians he had been the target of vicious attacks. To Paul
it was clear that more than his own reputation was at stake. The
critique from his opponents was rooted in a view of Christian
ministry that was irreconcilable with the gospel. They claimed
that Paul was not an adequate minister of Christ and that the
church in Corinth
should not take him seriously. The opponents bravely maintained
that they were more Spirit-filled than Paul, and, consequently,
that they should be considered a higher authority by the
Corinthian church.

In
his reply, Paul is forced to explain the real credentials for a
true apostle of Christ. For Paul, this was a very difficult task,
because his ministry was not about recommending himself but about
recommending his savior, Jesus Christ. To compare himself with
other human beings is a faux pas for Paul, who is accountable to
God, not to human beings (2
Cor 10:12–13).

When
Paul does engage in a comparison between himself and his opponents
in 2
Cor 11–12,
we see him at his most sarcastic. It is as though he is saying:
“So, these teachers think they are better servants of Christ
than I am? Let us see what they are bragging about. I’ll
promise you that no matter what they say, I have something
better.” He speaks like a little child, or, as he says, a
fool (11:16–21),
to demonstrate the ludicrousness of this whole enterprise of
boasting.

When
Paul sets out to substantiate this, he subverts the whole concept
of boasting. When a pastor starts boasting of himself, we expect
that he will tell us the size of the congregations he has
addressed, how popular he has become, how many churches he has
founded, and how many adherents he has won. But Paul does the
opposite. He starts to enumerate his defeats, his humiliations,
and his sufferings.

Modern
Christians easily misunderstand Paul’s listing of his
sufferings in 2
Cor 11:21–33.
We are so impressed by everything Paul was able to withstand for
the sake of the gospel. But in Paul’s world the standards
were very different. The Greeks worshiped the perfect human body.
Weakness, sickness, and suffering equaled imperfection and
humiliation. It was embarrassing to the church in Corinth to be
associated with a leader like Paul, who was the opposite of a
dynamic and self-conscious leader, but rather appeared as a
pathetic loser.

In
his list of exploits, Paul mentions the most humiliating events of
his life. Whereas warlords such as Augustus
and Pompey would list the exact number of towns they had occupied
and the number of troops that had surrendered to them, Paul took
care to give the exact number of public corrections he had
received. With
the specific mention of the thirty-nine
lashes, the beating with rods, and stoning, Paul has
effectively made reference to his degrading rejection by all
conceivable authorities (with the possible exception of the church
in Jerusalem). Jewish authorities, Roman authorities, as well as
popular opinion have punished him in the most degrading ways
(11:24–25).

Stoning
was a particularly shameful form of punishment, as it was normally
executed by the community. Demosthenes
reports that Aeschines gave up his profession as an actor after an
attempted stoning by the crowd. Stoning might therefore be
considered the conclusive evidence of the complete failure of an
orator. Paul’s
“bragging” at this point amounts to the ultimate
self-defeat. His point is that his credentials as an apostle of
Christ are his complete lack of credentials. Since he does not
have anything else to brag about, the power of Christ can be
effective in him (12:9–10).

In
Paul’s mind, to be Christ’s servant means to identify
with Christ’s cross. Just as Christ came in the utmost
weakness, and was hung on a cross, so also does Christ’s
servant appear in weakness and humiliation. But as the
resurrection power of Christ was at work in the midst of Christ’s
weakness – on
the cross – so
is the same power at work through the weakness of the apostle
(13:4).

In
Philippians
3:1–11Paul warns against the danger
of self-righteousness. In this connection he mentions himself as
an example. The most important criterion for being right with God
(concerning this there was broad agreement among Jews) was of
course to belong to the people that was chosen by God. In that
respect Paul had reason to be confident. He possessed the sign of
the covenant, circumcision, executed on the eighth day, according
to the law. He belonged to the elect people, Israel. In this
matter there was no room for doubt, as his pedigree could be
traced back to the patriarch Benjamin, the son of Jacob.

Many
Jews felt that simply to be of Jewish origin did not provide any
guarantee of also belonging to God’s chosen people.
Disobedience of God’s law could result in a loss of this
privilege. Even if this more restricted interpretation of God’s
election would turn out to be the correct one, Paul had no reason
to fear. His law observance was in a class of its own. He had
joined the Pharisees, the strictest party regarding the
interpretation of the law (Acts
26:5).

But
with his customary affinity for stark contrasts, Paul has no
sooner finished listing all the reasons why he should be right
with God before he rejects all of them. It is as though he is
competing with himself to reject these credentials as emphatically
as he can. With a crescendo of three expressions, he makes his
point: I have come to regard as loss, I regard everything as loss,
I regard them as rubbish. Why? Because to know Christ is so much
more worth. And those who want to belong to Christ, as Paul has
just explained, they should have the same mind that was in Christ
(2:5).
Christ’s mind-set is shown by how he, who was in the highest
position of all, in the form of God, emptied himself and was
awarded the very lowest position in this world. He was handed over
to death and had to die in the most humiliating way, executed on a
cross. Those who want to belong to Christ must be conformed to
him. The idea that one’s position before God can be tied to
something palpable, such as one’s pedigree or one’s
deeds, is an idea that has to be abandoned. Just as Jesus’
humiliation was the way to is perfect exaltation, so also does a
Christian’s way to exaltation go through identification with
Christ’s humiliation. The Christians’ assurance that
they are God’s children can therefore never be tied to
anything of their own, but always to Jesus Christ and the
knowledge of belonging to him.

Thereby
Paul has also explained the difference between true and false
Christianity. False Christians want to connect their faith in
Jesus with some kind of quality or achievement that can be
considered their own. But faith like that is in reality a
rejection of faith in Jesus. For faith in Jesus entails a mind-set
that abandons one’s own and leads to humiliation, because
gaining Christ is so much more worth.

To
Paul, being a Christian means identifying with the cross of
Christ. To be a Christian therefore implies a total reevaluation
of all values. Paul rejects that which formerly was considered
honorable and which increased his status. Instead, he glories in
that which was considered dishonor. On the cross, Jesus identified
with the utmost shame, and, consequently, Paul has turned upside
down everything that is considered honor and shame. Now he boasts
in that which is considered dishonor, his humiliations and his
defeats. For God’s power is at work in that which appears to
be weakness in the eyes of the world. God’s kingdom is a
bizarro world.

Recent
New Testament scholarship, often referred to as the
new perspective on Paul,
tends to downplay the differences between Paul and Judaism. There
are good reasons why. Previously, scholars tended to emphasize the
differences so strongly that they forgot that Paul was a Jew.
Instead, Paul was seen almost exclusively as a product of Greek
philosophy. Therefore, it is a big step forward when scholars now
focus more on how Paul’s thinking is rooted in the Old
Testament and his Jewish heritage.

It
is more controversial
when scholars associated with the new perspective claim that Paul
did not have a view of salvation that was fundamentally different
from Judaism. Many scholars maintain that the Jews believed in
salvation by grace, through the election of Israel, in a way that
was comparable to Paul's emphasis on grace. The difference is only
that Paul believed that God’s salvation was given to human
beings of all nations, not only Jews, through Jesus, the Jewish
Messiah, who was given as a light to the nations (Isa
49:6). Paul’s
critique of the Jews, in Romans
9–11for example, must therefore
be understood as a critique of the conviction that salvation only
belonged to the Jews and that the Gentiles only could be saved if
they became like Jews. The particularism of the Jews, not their
works-righteousness or self-righteousness, was the object of
Paul’s censure. In this way, Paul becomes the first great
spokesperson for anti-racism. God’s grace is given to all,
independent of ethnic identity.

As
I have argued , however, Paul’s teaching on the uniqueness
of Christian faith goes deeper than this. In light of the cross of
Christ, even the Jewish election-based faith must be rejected as
self-righteousness. Belief in Jesus is belief in the crucified
one, and thereby a faith that God’s power works through
weakness and that God’s exaltation takes place through
humiliation. Therefore, faith in Jesus entails not trusting in
anything that can be counted as one’s own, whether that be
good works or ethnic inclusion in God’s chosen people. This
is how radical Paul is when he insists that he will boast in Jesus
alone.